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Books > Reference & Interdisciplinary > Interdisciplinary studies > Peace studies
This book examines the threat of a terrorist organisation constructing and detonating a nuclear bomb. It explores the role and impact of the organisational design of a terrorist organisation in implementing a nuclear terrorism plot. In order to do so, the work builds on the organisational analogy between an assumed nuclear terrorism scenario and four case studies as follows: the construction of the first atomic bombs at Los Alamos; South Africa's Peaceful Nuclear Explosives (PNE) program; Aum Shinrikyo's chemical-biological armament activities; and Al Qaeda's implementation of the 9/11 attacks. Extrapolating insights from these case studies, this book introduces the idea of an effectiveness-efficiency trade-off. On the one hand, it will be argued that a more organic organisational design is likely to benefit the effective implementation of a nuclear terrorism project. On the other hand, this type of organic organisational design is also likely to simultaneously constitute an inefficient way for a terrorist organisation to guarantee its operational and organisational security. It follows, then, that the implementation of a nuclear terrorism plot via an organic organisational design is also likely to be an inefficient strategy for a terrorist organisation to achieve its strategic and political goals. This idea of an effectiveness-efficiency trade-off provides us with a tool to strengthen the comprehensive nature of future nuclear terrorism threat assessments and sheds new light on the ongoing debates within the nuclear terrorism literature. This book will be of particular interest to students of nuclear proliferation, terrorism studies, international organisations, and security studies in general.
This book explores what political conditions must be established and what obstacles overcome for the fi ve offi cial Nuclear Weapon States (NWS)- China, France, Russia, the UK and US- to eliminate their nuclear weapons. The different views and positions of a range of actors concerning nuclear weapons issues- including elite perspectives and public opinion- and the political assumptions underpinning them, are discussed to develop a more democratic approach to disarmament. Addressing the lack of detailed analysis concerning the meaning of nuclear disarmament for the domestic political orders of NWS, the book critically explores different approaches to and theories of disarmament within legal, political and technical literatures and orthodox and critical theory. It also builds on previous discussions of nuclear possession, restraint, arms control, and disarmament- concerning both nuclear possessor and non- possessor states- identifying the insights these works provide regarding how NWS disarmament may be advanced. Contributing to theoretical debates concerning how domestic politics interacts with and determines states' international behaviour, the book will be of interest to all scholars and students of history, politics, international relations, security studies, military history, war studies, peace studies, confl ict, democracy, and global governance.
This book examines the issue of territorial control by violent jihadist groups, using a comparative perspective. The book argues that in many parts of the world the connection between a state and the control over territory is not as close as presented by conventional political maps, and therefore it is necessary to analyse the territoriality of non-state actors as well. Based on a variety of case studies, the work looks at different levels of connection between the violent Islamist groups and territory, dividing them into non-territorial, semi-territorial and territorial groups. While the majority of the cases are located in the Middle East (Islamic State, Al-Qaeda, Al-Qaeda at the Arabian Peninsula, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham, Hamas and Hezbollah), the book also draws cases from Africa (groups in the western Sahel, Al-Shabaab and Boko Haram), South Asia (Taliban), and East Asia (Abu Sayyaf). By providing in-depth understanding of their respective approaches to territory, the book identifies the specifics of each group's territoriality, while also drawing more general conclusions. This book will be of much interest to students of terrorism and political violence, radical Islam, Middle Eastern studies, and International Relations in general.
This book chronicles the genesis of the negotiations that led to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), which challenged the established nuclear order. The work provides readers with an authoritative account of the complex evolution of the 'Humanitarian Initiative' (HI) and the negotiation history of the TPNW. It includes a close analysis of internal strategy documents and communications in the author's possession which trace the tactical and political decisions of a small group of state actors. By demonstrating the unacceptable humanitarian consequences and uncontrollable risks that these weapons pose to everyone's security, the HI convinced many states to ban nuclear weapons and reject the policy of nuclear deterrence as unsustainable and illegitimate. As such, this book is a case-study of multilateral diplomacy and cooperation between state and civil society actors. It also contains a full discussion of both sides of the nuclear argument and assesses the extent to which the HI and the TPNW have moved the dial and present opportunities for transformational change. This book will be of much interest to students of nuclear disarmament, arms control and non-proliferation, diplomacy, global governance, and International Relations in general.
In State Secrecy and Security: Refiguring the Covert Imaginary, William Walters calls for secrecy to be given a more central place in critical security studies and elevated to become a core concept when theorising power in liberal democracies. Through investigations into such themes as the mobility of cryptographic secrets, the power of public inquiries, the connection between secrecy and place-making, and the aesthetics of secrecy within immigration enforcement, Walters challenges commonplace understandings of the covert and develops new concepts, methods and themes for secrecy and security research. Walters identifies the covert imaginary as both a limit on our ability to think politics differently and a ground to develop a richer understanding of power. State Secrecy and Security offers readers a set of thinking tools to better understand the strange powers that hiding, revealing, lying, confessing, professing ignorance and many other operations of secrecy put in motion. It will be a valuable resource for scholars and students of security, secrecy and politics more broadly.
This volume addresses how and in what capacity the European Union and its member states are able to respond to fundamental shifts occurring in global politics and remain relevant for the future. The changing nature of the international system is subject to considerable contestation among scholars, with many claiming that the fundamentals of the post-war international system are being rewritten. This volume brings together prominent scholars in the field of European security to address a range of pertinent issues related to Europe's role in the context of evolving global challenges. The first section focuses on whether the EU is an actor with a strategic nature and the means to act on a global security strategy. The second section considers the institutional dynamics and the approaches at the EU's disposal to fulfil its possible intended global roles. The third section addresses Europe's most important strategic relationship-the partnership it has with the United States. This section considers the recalibration of the transatlantic relationship in light of the changing international system and the reorientation of U.S. foreign policy. This book will be of much interest to students of European Union policy, European Security policy, European Foreign policy and International Relations in general.
This book reveals why the UN is more successful than unilateral great powers in protecting civilians from violence, and focuses on the discourse, development and consequences of UN peacekeeping. Analysing statistics of state fragility and fatalities of violence, it reveals that the UN has managed to save tens of thousands of lives with its peacekeeping: a surprising statistic given the media consensus about the UN's powerlessness and inefficiency. Using computer-assisted discourse analysis of resolutions from the UN Security Council, 1993-2019, the book offers data that describe the character and development of UN approach to the protection of civilians from violence. It then links the data to the statistics of conflict fatalities and state fragility to reveal, by means of qualitative and quantitative analysis, when, where, how and why the UN has been successful at protecting civilians. Two reasons for the UN's success are highlighted in the book as being statistically most significant. First, the organization offers local ownership to peaceful solutions by considering conflicting parties as the primary agents of protection. Second, the UN approach is much less power-oriented than unilateral approaches by the great powers: protection for the UN does not mean deterrence or destruction, but rather, support for local protectors of civilians. However, strong great power influence on such operations tends to weaken UN's ability to save lives. This book will be of much interest to students of humanitarian intervention, peacekeeping, human rights and International Relations in general.
A volume in Peace Education Series Editors: Jing Lin, University of Maryland, Edward J. Brantmeier, Colorado State University, and Ian Harris, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee Currently, peace education remains marginalized in our education system, however, a united front can be formed and powerful paradigms can empower educators to play a critical role in peace building through scholarship, practice and activism. Indeed, educators around the world are developing effective strategies to transform education as a powerful force for global peace. The diverse array of contributors in the book demonstrate that educators as peace makers can be and have been instrumental in transforming social forces, the self and others for the construction of global peace. The book aims to broaden the educational discourse in order to make room for new visions to educate future generations for peace. Local and global efforts to build a long-lasting peace are presented through the lens of education. The timeliness of peace education surely renders this book relevant to educators and the general public alike as individuals, communities, and organizations struggle to find pathways to peace in a global world. In other words, this book will interest scholars and the general public concerned about the building of global peace. The book can be source book for educators at elementary, secondary, and postsecondary institutions to explore multiple ways to conduct effective peace education at all levels of education. The book may also be used as a textbook by instructors of multicultural education, of comparative & international education, and of undergraduate and graduate peace education courses
In Researching Yugoslavia and its Aftermath, a common thread is the authors' path through the time and space context in which fieldwork has taken place. Accordingly, this collection tackles problems that have always existed but have not been dealt with in a single volume. In particular, it examines a range of methodological questions arising from the contributors' shared concerns, and thus the obstacles and solutions characterising the relationship between researchers and their objects of study. Being an interdisciplinary project, this book brings together highly regarded historians, sociologists, anthropologists, political scientists, cultural and social theorists, as well as experts in architecture and communication studies. They share a belief that the awareness of the researcher's own position in fieldwork is a precondition of utmost significance to comprehend the evolution of objects of study, and hence to ensure transparency and ultimate credibility of the findings. Moreover, the contributors come from diverse backgrounds, including authors from the former Yugoslavia and others who have made their way to the region after starting their research careers; some from universities in the area, others from institutions in the Global North. Here, they explore cross-cutting issues such as the repercussions of gender, nationality, institutional affiliation and the consequences of their entry into the field. This is examined in terms of the results of the research and the ethical aspect of the relationship with the object of study, as well as the implications of the chosen time framework in the methodological design and the clash between this decision and the interests of the actors studied.
The book presents a novel analytical perspective on Indonesia's security policies during its transition to democracy. Kurniawan's analysis revolves around extraordinary measures and normal politics in response to the existential threat to the Indonesian state. This perspective is at the centre of the analysis which examines the process of securitization and desecuritization taken by the Indonesian government. This volume is essential reading for practitioners, students of Indonesian politics and researchers alike.
This book draws lessons from the story of Sri Lanka's post-conflict development in the context of a struggle for socio-political reconciliation, a turbulent world economy, and difficult internal and external political challenges. Heightened volatility in the global economy and intensifying geopolitical rivalries pose complex policy challenges for small countries embarking on post-conflict daunting challenges. To sustain peace, development needed to be broad based and inclusive. It needed to rapidly reconstruct war-devastated regions, restore macroeconomic stability, while delivering a 'peace dividend'. The book contains contributions that highlight Sri Lanka's endeavours of coping with adverse shocks, while exploiting new opportunities. It showcases how the island country had to attract capital and assistance, and support of the international community, including that of the rising Asian giants - China and India. Addressing the post-conflict challenges of sourcing development finance in a new global financial and political landscape, the book would be of interest to researchers working on post-conflict development in the context of a volatile global economy and changing aid architecture, and would also act as an important resource for policy makers.
The recent COVID-19 global pandemic exemplifies the need for efficient, reliable, and real-time tools and technology for forecasting and predicting healthcare disasters as well as for helping to restrict subsequent spread and fatality of deadly diseases. This new book discusses many of the innovative and state-of-the-art tools and technology that can help meet the challenges of predicting such disasters. The chapters offer a plethora of useful information for designing healthcare disaster management systems that can be dynamically configurable with implementation of today’s modern technology, such as cloud computing, artificial intelligence, IoT, data analytics, and machine learning. These can increase effectiveness in remote sensing technologies, data analytics, data storage, communication networks, geographic information system (GIS), and global positioning System (GPS), to name a few. The book discusses mathematical models using graph-based approaches for analyzing dynamic, heterogeneous, and unstructured data for applications in epidemiology. The authors also address the use of mobile applications for communication efforts and remote monitoring for gauging health and the effectiveness of preventive healthcare measures. The chapters discuss influencing factors that directly or indirectly target public health infrastructure that can lead to or exacerbate global health crises, such as extreme climate changes, refugee health crises, terrorism and cyberterrorism, and technology-related incidents. The book further looks at efficient methods to analyze disasters and how to deliver healthcare in areas of conflict and crisis. This important volume, Global Healthcare Disasters: Predicting the Unpredictable with Emerging Technologies, provides a bounty of useful information for health professionals, academicians, researchers, governmental agencies, and policymakers across the world to predict, mitigate, and manage global health disaster with emerging technologies.
The United States-Australia alliance has been an important component of the US-led system of alliances that has underpinned regional security in the Indo-Pacific since 1945. However, recent geostrategic developments, in particular the rise of the People's Republic of China, have posed significant challenges to this US-led regional order. In turn, the growing strategic competition between these two great powers has generated challenges to the longstanding US-Australia alliance. Both the US and Australia are confronting a changing strategic environment, and, as a result, the alliance needs to respond to the challenges that they face. The US needs to understand the challenges and risks to this vital relationship, which is growing in importance, and take steps to manage it. On its part, Australia must clearly identify its core common interests with the US and start exploring what more it needs to do to attain its stated policy preferences. This book consists of chapters exploring US and Australian perspectives of the Indo-Pacific, the evolution of Australia-US strategic and defence cooperation, and the future of the relationship. Written by a joint US-Australia team, the volume is aimed at academics, analysts, students, and the security and business communities.
This book offers the first comprehensive analysis of MINURSO (the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara), focused on its activities, composition, purpose, and operational future in Western Sahara, the world's last colony. The book's focus is broad, examining MINURSO from key historical, legal, military and political angles whilst assessing the future of UN peacekeeping missions in the Western Sahara. Supported by a diverse, international mix of perspectives and professions-including academics, lawyers, soldiers, and humanitarian aid workers-an in-depth view of MINURSO is provided, rooted in practical Western Saharan field experience. The authors reveal the complexities of the region and of the mission locally, but also analyze MINURSO through a global lens, focusing on relations with the United States, China, Russia, France, and African states. This approach emphasizes the importance of the region as a site of international struggle while remaining conscious of local contexts. A landmark contribution to peacekeeping studies, the book is vital reading for practitioners and academics focused on the Western Saharan conflict and the MENA region, but will also be of interest to those engaged in international relations, international law, and security studies.
This book investigates how Uyghur-related violent conflict and Uyghur ethnic minority identity, religion, and the Xinjiang region, more broadly, became constituted as a 'terrorism' problem for the Chinese state. Building on securitization theory, Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS), and the scholarly definitional debate on terrorism, it develops the concept of terroristization as a critical analytical framework for the study of historical processes of threat construction. Investigating the violent events reported in Xinjiang since the early 1980s, the evolving discursive patterns used by the Chinese state to make sense of violent incidents, and the crackdown policies that the official terrorism discourse has legitimized, the book demonstrates how the securitization, and later terroristization, of Xinjiang and the Uyghurs, is the result of a discursive and political choice of the Chinese state. The author reveals the contingent and unstable nature of such construction, and how it problematizes the inevitability of the rationale behind China's 'war on terror', that has prescribed a brutal crackdown as the most viable approach to governing the tensions that have historically characterized China's rule over the Turkic Muslim ethnic minorities in Xinjiang. This book will be of interest to scholars and students of the politics of contemporary China, security and ethnic minority issues, International Relations and Security, as well as those adopting discursive approaches to the study of security, notably those within the critical security and terrorism studies fields.
This book contextualizes the Munich massacre as one of the factors that contributed to a re-thinking of security strategies in the early 1970s, a moment in the evolution of modern governments' fight against terrorism. In the early hours of September 5th, 1972, heavily armed members of the Palestinian group, Black September, turned terrorism into a global televisual spectacle for the first time by entering the Olympic Village, where they murdered two Israeli athletes and took nine of their teammates hostage in 31 Connollystrasse. Indeed, terrorism has far-reaching implications on social, psychological, and political levels. Sporting attacks on athletic personalities or mega-events may also seriously affect the reputation of the political leadership, ultimately undermining the state's authority. Hence, 50 years later, this book aims to gather contemporaneous scholarly work that further explores this topic from a variety of perspectives-from security, sociology, media, history, public relations, to the political, ideological, and psychological aspects of sport and terror. This volume will be of great use to scholars and researchers interested in Terrorist and Security studies, political violence, and the Arab Israeli conflict, particularly the collective memory of the Munich Massacre. The chapters in this book were first published as a special issue of Israel Affairs.
This book fills a gap in our knowledge about the activities of Western supporters and members of Islamic State by examining the experience of their Australian cohort. More than 200 Australian men, women and children travelled to Syria and Iraq to fight with Islamist groups and to help establish an Islamic State by force. Dozens more assisted Islamic State by supporting those overseas or by planning or carrying out terrorist attacks in Australia. For all that, little is publicly known about the impact of the Syrian conflict on Australia's radical Islamists. This book provides a well-researched examination of how and why so many Australians travelled to fight for or otherwise supported Islamic State. From the failed attempt to bring down an Etihad passenger plane en route from Sydney to Abu Dhabi, to showing their children holding the heads of Syrian soldiers, Australians were prominent in carrying out Islamic State's directions. Using a range of Australian and foreign court records, social and mainstream media content, this book provides the first detailed look at who these people were, what tasks they carried out, how they came to adopt this radical view of Islam and what long-term legal and security implications are likely to result from their actions. This book will be of interest to students of terrorism, political Islam and security studies.
This book analyses the role power sharing, social movements, economic regeneration, urban space, memorialisation and symbols play in transforming divided societies into shared peaceful ones. It explains why some projects are counterproductive while others assist peace-building.
This book traces the trajectory and different meanings of the concept of peacebuilding in the United Nations since the early 1990s. It analyses how that concept gained life in a particular context and the implications of this process for the Organisation's support to societies affected by armed conflict in general and for peace operations in particular. Departing from tenets about the influence of ideas in world politics and engaging with the critique of the liberal peace scholarship, the book provides a theoretically informed narrative of how peacebuilding acquired different meanings while remaining largely motivated, justified, legitimated and informed by a proactive and top-down agenda of promoting liberal democratic institutions, norms and values as a remedy to the challenges faced by societies affected by armed conflict. The book will appeal to scholars, policymakers and practitioners in peacebuilding and post-conflict development.
This book uses the 'strategic-relational approach' to explain how the Labour governments of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown integrated the United Kingdom into the US ballistic missile defence system in order to maintain national security and to uphold the 'special relationship' while at the same time recognising that voters were in general opposed to missile defence. Labour's Ballistic Missile Defence Policy 1997-2010 examines how the Labour administration was tasked with navigating a domestic political environment in which they had to appear tough on defence in general in order to appeal to a broader range of the electorate while recognising that voters were opposed to missile defence in particular. This book seeks to answer the question of why the centre-left government of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, elected on a mandate of multi-lateralism in international relations and espousing an 'ethical dimension' to foreign policy, committed the United Kingdom to US ballistic missile defence - an internationally divisive military project associated with the US Republican Party and George W. Bush in particular. This book is essential for students and researchers interested in British military history, international relations, strategic studies, British politics, Labour politics and political theory.
Nuclear Cultures: Irradiated Subjects, Aesthetics and Planetary Precarity aims to develop the field of nuclear humanities and the powerful ability of literary and cultural representations of science and catastrophe to shape the meaning of historic events. Examining multiple discourses and textual materials, including fiction, poetry, biographies, comics, paintings, documentary and photography, this volume will illuminate the cultural, ecological and social impact of nuclearization narratives. Furthermore, this text explores themes such as the cultures of atomic scientists, the making of the bomb, nuclear bombings and disasters, nuclear aesthetics and art, and the global mobilization against nuclearization. Nuclear Cultures breaks new ground in the debates on "the nuclear" to foster the development of nuclear humanities, its vocabulary and methodology.
This book analyzes the development and evolution of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, a multinational aircraft endeavor involving the U.S. and many of its allies. The author provides a historical overview of jet fighter aircraft, discussing the different generations of these planes and their technical characteristics, as well as an outline of emerging international geopolitical and security trends the F-35 may see combat in. By examining the role of defense industries, domestic politics, and governmental oversight of the Joint Strike Fighter in various countries, the author concludes that this aircraft will be deployed in most of these countries to replace their aging jet fighter fleets and combat potential military aggression from China, Russia, and other revisionist international powers.
This book investigates the imaginative capacities of literature, art and culture as sites for reimagining human rights, addressing deep historical and structural forms of belonging and unbelonging; the rise of xenophobia, neoliberal governance, and securitization that result in the purposeful precaritization of marginalized populations; ecological damage that threatens us all, yet the burdens of which are distributed unequally; and the possibility of decolonial and posthuman approaches to rights discourses. The book starts from the premise that there are deep-seated limits to the political possibilities of state and individual sovereignty in terms of protecting human rights around the world. The essays explore how different forms, materials, perspectives, and aesthetics can help reveal the limits of normative human rights and contribute to the cultural production of new human rights imaginaries beyond the borders of state and self.
The outbreak of the First World War saw an upsurge of patriotism. The Church generally saw the war as justified, and many clergy encouraged the men in their congregations to join the army. There was, however, already a strong strand of anti-war sentiment, opposed to the dominant theology of the Establishment. This was partly based on traditional Christian pacifism, but included other religious, social and political influences. Campaigners and conscientious objectors voiced a growing concern about the huge human cost of a conflict seemingly endlessly bogged down in the mud of the Flanders poppy fields. 'Subversive Peacemakers' recounts the stories of a strong and increasingly organised opposition to war, from peace groups to poets, from preachers to politicians, from women to working men, all of whom struggled to secure peace in a militarised and fragmenting society. Clive Barrett demonstrates that the Church of England provided an unlikely setting for much of this war resistance. Barrett masterfully narrates the story of the peace movement, bringing together stories of war-resistance until now lost, disregarded or undervalued. The people involved, as well as the dramatic events of the conflict themselves, are seen in a new light.
This edited volume examines the multifaceted impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on peoples and states in East Asia. The book brings together selected case studies in Southeast Asia and the wider East Asian region that analyse how states in the region have responded to the pandemic and its multi-dimensional threats to human security, including risks of atrocity crimes. In the context of protecting human security and upholding the Responsibility to Protect (R2P), the work analyses how such a consequential crisis has compounded socio-economic and political problems, exacerbated societal fault lines, and created new types of risks for people's safety and security. Using the United Nations Framework of Analysis for Atrocity Crimes: A Tool for Prevention, the book presents seven case studies that identify relevant risks factors confronting selected countries and the extent to which the global pandemic has magnified and/or exacerbated such risks for affected populations. It draws key lessons on how states should manage extant and emerging risks for atrocity crimes and how they can build and enhance their capabilities for preventing atrocities in both conflict-affected and relatively stable states, particularly within the context of Pillar 1 (prevention) and Pillar 2 (capacity building) of the R2P principle. This book will be of much interest to students of the Responsibility to Protect, humanitarian protection, Asian politics, International Relations, and Security studies. |
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